Stuart N Hardy competes for space in this YS Multimedia Application (writing from Sheffield)
Stuart N Hardy never wrote into YS. He "borrowed" his mate's copy, and noticed that a certain Leigh Loveday managed to get a letter into (almost) every issue. Not one to refuse to take a challeenge, he decided to try and compete for letter-writing space in none other than one of Future Publishing's other magazines: Amiga Power. After writing in every month for a year (and writing such obvious junk, as well), he extended his talent into other areas of Future Publishing's computer mags. Amiga Format put an unofficial ban on his letters, and Teletext's Digitiser awarded him a 'Hot Topic' (Future Publishing subscription to Edge magazine) prize in late 1995.
Every magazine editor in the country can recognise Stuart N Hardy's handwriting (probably because he writes using coloured pens - emphasising words in red, for example) before reaching his signature at the bottom. A challenge for You Bet!? After the subscription ran out, he couldn't bring himself to buy another magazine, so, instead, wrote into BBC TV's Points of View.
Leigh Loveday is now virtually unknown, and Stuart N is regarded as one of the most prolific letter writers in the country. He has achieved his goal - and then some!
Oh, and last night in fact he wrote into what must have been both Ceefax and Teletext on ITV over the course of the same weekend, having exactly the same letter 'published'. He was basically writing about how he was fed up that people were slagging off C5 and he said that they shouldn't because it hadn't had time to establish itself as a decent channel and that the greater choice would only be GOOD for the viewers and not bad like everyone else thought, so there.
N.B. Stu N also recently wrote into Digitiser Again, no doubt trying to win a 'prescription' to Edge magazine by writing in with rubbish comments about that week's hot topic which was whether computer games were confined to sad adolescents but Stu, the wise man that he is, said (and I quote) ,"Games are probably also enjoyed by Executives after a hard day at the office!" (Or something like that but yes, the exclamation mark was there. It seems to us that the only sad adolescent is Stu himself.)
N.B Again : Stu appeared on digitiser again over the weekend, talking some rubbish about people would argue that their console is better because it's theirs or somesuch useless drivel (a bit relevant to this application, really). Digitiser replied that his first sentence was 'seriously messed up' and everyone else wishes that he would stop.